Royal Mail is unable to despatch letters and parcels overseas as it suffers ‘severe disruption’

Crisis-hit Royal Mail has blamed a ‘cyber incident’ for severe disruption to its international export service.

In a statement released today, the company apologised to its customers and said it was temporarily unable to despatch export items including letters and parcels to foreign destinations.

The news comes as a fresh blow to customers following weeks of strikes over the busy festive period as the postal and courier service wrangles with staff over jobs, pay and working conditions.

Letters went undelivered and parcels piled up after more than 115,000 Communication Workers Union opted to walk out – costing the company more than £100million, it was reported.  

Royal Mail’s workers inflicted misery on those posting gifts and cards in the run up to December 25 

Royal Mail said it plans to work with external experts as it launched an investigation into the incident and ‘sincerely apologised’ to customers for the disruption.

The firm’s import services remain operational, but are experiencing minor delays, reports Sky News.

Royal Mail sends thousands of items abroad each day – with 152 million parcels sent to foreign recipients in the year to March. 

MailOnline understands the National Cyber Security Centre and regulators have both been made aware of the incident. 

The company said in a statement today: ‘We have asked customers temporarily to stop submitting any export items into the network while we work hard to resolve the issue.

‘Some customers may experience delay or disruption to items already shipped for export.

‘Our import operations continue to perform a full service with some minor delays.

‘Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this disruption and we will update customers as soon as we have more information.

‘We immediately launched an investigation into the incident and we are working with external experts.

‘We have reported the incident to our regulators and the relevant security authorities.

‘We would like to sincerely apologise to impacted customers for any disruption this incident may be causing.’

It comes hours after all flights across America were grounded today for the first time since 9/11 after an unexplained Federal Aviation Administration systems failure.

The hours-long pause sent the day’s travel into chaos that is expected to last hours – if not days. 

Already, more than 6,000 flights have been delayed and 1,000 flights have been canceled.

All flights across America were grounded today for the first time since 9/11 after an unexplained Federal Aviation Administration systems failure 

Passengers at Chicago O’Hare airport on Wednesday after a ‘computer failure’ halted all flights for several hours and delayed 5,000 planes 

JFK: Grounded planes are shown at New York’s JFK on Wednesday morning as the delays continued

The FAA is yet to explain how the catastrophic glitch came about or why there was no back-up system in place to ensure planes could continue to fly. 

All that the White House has said is that there is no evidence of a cyber attack ‘at this point’, but no further details have been given.

The latest disruption to Royal Mail’s service comes as piles of undelivered post were pictured stacked up at depots across the country as a fresh wave of strikes caused havoc over Christmas. 

Images shared in December showed mail bags piling up in North West England, South West London and Essex.

More than 100,000 Royal Mail workers chose to strike across seven days during December, one of the busiest periods for the postal service.

It comes as delivery giant Evri apologised for festive delays amid evidence of wider chaos across the courier network and Royal Mail.

The number of late deliveries between Black Friday and Christmas was up by around one third on the same period the year before, according to new evidence.

Delivery companies have been accused of ‘ruining Christmas’ after customers’ parcels went missing, were stolen, and even sold off at a car boot sale.

Postal regulator Ofcom has put the industry on notice that customer service around late and missing items is so bad that it is considering taking enforcement action.